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In a signal that Pennsylvania is not a closed deal, Mr. Obama last week gave an Oval Office interview to Michael Smerconish, a Philadelphia radio talk-show host who was born in Bucks County and has a following in the collar counties. Gov. Rendell sums up the mood among Democrats: “We’re nervous.”

Hooo. Keep hoping. Can you find a poll that has Willard ahead in PA? You know PA is right next to New Jersey. You know the state where the Tea Party Republican Governor just called Romney useless while praising the President. Jersey stories play huge in Philadelphia as parts of Jersey are Philly suburbs.

But whatever. The President continues to hold a lead in Ohio and Colorado and Nevada. Those three make 270. PA gets him close to 300 but isn’t really necessary.

But then I guess Willard’s going to get that huge post-Sandy bump on the eastern seaboard and take this thing.

Not yet. But then, polls are lagging indicators. Polls also will be affected in states in which the storm caused substantial disruption of the lives of people. Hard to answer the phone when the lines are down.

Hey don’t look now but Quinnipiac/CBS has the President up in Florida and they’re underpolling Democrats at least as compared to the Florida Sec. of State’s public records on voter registration by party. (41% per SOS, 37% in the poll) Maybe Willard can ride the coattails of Connie Mack at 38%

Salem, OR newspaper that endorsed Obama in 2008 is going a different route this year:

Editorial: Give Romney a chance; Obama had his
President hasn’t met expectationsRomney has solid record
The Olympic movement can be so full of infighting and intrigue that it makes Congress seem like child’s play. Romney skillfully navigated that political and economic quagmire, replacing scandal with credibility at the Salt Lake Games. Furthermore, Romney served a solid term as governor of Massachusetts.

His flexibility on issues has earned him a reputation as a flip-flopper, but we think it actually will be an asset in dealing with Congress. It shows he is not rigid ideologue.

Romney has an excellent vice presidential choice in Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan, who is not the extremist that Democrats have portrayed. Ryan is bright and thoughtful, and his congressional experience complements Romney’s background in the private sector and state government.

That business skill cannot be overstated. Romney’s leadership will inspire businesses to re-invest in workers and products, re-building the economy.

That’s Hi-larious. Less than a week for that poll to materialize. And Mr. Incompetent is driving a truckload of Campbell’s to people who don’t want it, can’t heat it. While the President is just doing his thing, looking Presidential, getting heaps of praise.

Willard hasn’t answered a question from a reporter in three weeks. You can call it ‘the liberal media’ but they’ve turned on him for it and he isn’t getting them back.

Colorado is trending to the President. Florida is trending toward the President, Ohio is big-time for the president, Michigan…if it’s so close, why isn’t Willard there on the ground?

Say it with me. The President has 270 without Pennsylvania but he’s going to win there too.

That’s funny. How long between press conferences did Obama go this Spring and Summer? I think the only guy who got to ask a question was Neil Munro and he had to do it by shouting it out in a Rose Garden ‘press event’ in which the press wasn’t allowed to ask questions.

Romney Willing to Win Without Honor
Throughout the presidential campaign, Mitt Romney confronted numerous George Washington moments & opportunities to establish an aura of honor. It takes moxie to tell fellow Republicans that voter suppression is un-American. Only a guy with strongly held principles would stand up to the firm he founded and insist they stop the morally bankrupt practice of offshoring jobs from profit-making American factories. At every turn, Romney kept his mouth shut rather than speak up for what’s right. George Washington’s appeal is his never-tell-a-lie, step-down-from-power nobility. Romney, by contrast, has shown he’s willing to win without honor.http://www.dailykos.com/story/.....hout-Honor

I thought this summed up one the key aspects of why I will not vote for romney.

If you believe this makeup of the electorate, that is:
The D/R/I on this poll is a ridiculous 45/36/19 that assumes Democrats will add six points to their 2008 turnout while independents largely stay home. In 2008, recall, the exit polls showed the electorate at 39/31/30, and the 2010 midterm put it at 36/37/28. Has anyone produced any evidence of such a wave of Democratic enthusiasm? Even the CBS/NYT/Q-poll today showed GOP enthusiasm leading by 14 in Ohio, 57/43.

It’s polls like this that will have Romney losing to Obama in the poll projections right up until Election Day. Unless people like Trende or Silver start to make adjustments to account for the increasing idiocy in the makeup of the poll participants, OH will always look like it’s Obama’s.

Look at the stupid shit you guys are reduced to pointing out. Not enough questions on the campaign trail (like that doesn’t happen on both sides). Not the right stuff donated to the Red Cross. Romney didn’t mention something in his RNC acceptance speech. This is piddly, little shit.

Meanwhile, there’s a tidal wave of newspaper endorsements for Romney/Ryan. They’ve seen enough.

Romney didn’t mention something in his RNC acceptance speech.
Then why did the red press become unhinged about the word terrorist that the President did not say fast enough?
Seems that it doesn’t matter only when your guy does it.

You still trying that one. It was months ago I handed you your ass on that claim. Hmmmmm

There was the long press conference in the briefing room on June 12. There was a press conference with president Calderon on April, 2nd. There were questions fielded at the press conference during the NATO summit on May, 31st…

Did you really think you could get away with makin’ shit up to refute the same guy TWICE? No wonder your a Willard guy. Don’t have the common sense or a memory.

There were questions fielded at the press conference during the NATO summit on May, 31st…

Yeah. Six questions.

That’s six questions from an international gaggle on May 31. ‘How do you like your accommodations, Senor Presidente?’.

Six questions between April 2 and June 12. Then at least seven weeks with zero questions after that.

Not counting the sit-downs with Vanity Fair-type mags with Michelle at his side, that is.

It’s Obama’s unwillingness to answer questions that makes the ones he does answer so important. The most recent example is the NBC Denver affiliate reporter’s questions on Friday about Benghazi and whether Obama denied requests for help. Questions he dodged.

Except he said he issued a directive. That’s supposed to have a paper trail.

“We’ve clearly entered some parallel universe during these last few days,” GM spokesman Greg Martin said. “No amount of campaign politics at its cynical worst will diminish our record of creating jobs in the U.S. and repatriating profits back to this country.”

Bob has been living in that parallel universe for some time now, as evidenced by his constant babbling and projecting on us “The Pain” he’ll soon be feeling.

Conservative syndicated columnist George Will write a column and you try to pass it off as an Ohio paper ‘proving’ the President is desperate. I could link to the San Francisco Chromicle’s reprint of that column so obviously Capofornia is turning to Willard.

That’s a Piddles tactic. Now I’m just making fun of you for my own entertainment.

I think with all of the news breaking Gekko/Galt’s way you’d jump on that, but to entice you further and just to show how absolutely full of shit you are about your own opinions, I’m willing to offer you 2:1 odds.

The stock market, which reopened today after a 2-day closure due to inclement weather, is slightly down today. But I’m not — I’m making about $125 today, which may not sound like a lot, but I’ll gladly take $15.62/hr. that I don’t have to work for.

I think this editorial gives Romney too much credit for his accomplishments and Obama too little for his.

Right! Give him a chance to attack Iran, destroy FEMA, destroy MEDICARE, outlaw abortions, etc. etc. Show me one thing Romney has done for us working stiffs besides send our jobs to China, and I might not think you are as big of a Republican Shill as I now think you are. What drivel!

Considering the SJ’s “stellar” record recently in terms of endorsements (Dudley, No on 66 & 67) I’d think Conservatives might be worried.
If anybody is surprised about this 2nd grade endorsement (Let’s give Mitt a chance to play with the Presidency, Barrack has had his), you haven’t been paying attention.

I have to admit I was mildly surprised to read of Mitt Romney’s endorsement by the Statesman Journal this morning. Also disappointed, mostly because I have always viewed the SJ as being somewhat progressive for a small town paper and more ‘center to left-leaning’ than ‘right’. I will let the Editorial Board of the paper have their opinion, as they are entitled. As far as ‘thought-out’ endorsements go however, I will take that of the Salt Lake Tribune’s October 19th Endorsement of President Obama, which states, in part: “In considering which candidate to endorse, The Salt Lake Tribune editorial board had hoped that Romney would exhibit the same talents for organization, pragmatic problem solving and inspired leadership that he displayed here more than a decade ago. Instead, we have watched him morph into a friend of the far right, then tack toward the center with breathtaking aplomb. Through a pair of presidential debates, Romney’s domestic agenda remains bereft of detail and worthy of mistrust.

A lot like ours, but since they are linked through facebook, a lot more thought out and respectful.

Still, I don’t understand their logicEditorial: Give Romney a chance; Obama had his, President hasn’t met expectations
So because the President has not done ENOUGH, we should let the flip flopper etch-a-sketchy guy and his party rule?

@34 If a cop told me I couldn’t wave a political sign on a public sidewalk, I think I’d explain to him this is America not Russia, too. I wonder if he was one of these guys?

“Today, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (FL-20) announced 63 new police officers will be hired to protect and serve South Floridians. The Department of Justice issued grants of more than $16 million to Miami-Dade County ($12 million), Town of Davie ($2.25 million), City of Hollywood ($1.9 million) and City of Wilton Manors ($218,000).”

Updated 8:42 a.m. Hours after being contacted by Danger Room, the New York Army National Guard on Tuesday night abruptly reversed a decision to send hundreds of soldiers out-of-state in the midst of the Hurricane Sandy relief effort.

Meanwhile, in Wisconsin, the core dishonesty of the Mitt Romney campaign and the Republican Party is rear its ugly head.

“The Wisconsin agency that oversees elections is objecting to an internal training handbook distributed by Mitt Romney’s campaign that appears to instruct volunteer poll observers in the state to conceal their ties to the GOP candidate when they show up at polling stations on Election Day, a state official tells NBC News. …

“The directive to observers … conflicts with official Wisconsin Government Accountability Board guidance to all poll observers, publicly posted on the agency’s website, instructing that they sign in and identify ‘the name of the organization or candidate the observer represents’ ….

“The training document appears to instruct observers to hide their connection to the Romney campaign from the election inspectors at polling booths. While the observers should introduce themselves to the inspectors, they should ‘sign in as a “concerned citizen” … ,’ according to the document, which bears the official insignia of the Romney campaign and is entitled ‘Volunteer Observer Training.’ …

“Magney said there were other problems with the training handbook, including its definition of ineligible voters — whose ballots could be questioned — as a ‘person who has been convicted of treason, a felony or bribery.’ Magney noted that under Wisconsin law, convicted felons who have served their sentences can have their civil rights restored and are eligible to vote.

“The Romney campaign handbook also lists ‘The ONLY Acceptable Forms of “Proof of Residency” for voters …. But Magney said the list is incomplete, failing to mention other forms of proof ….”

Roger Rabbit Commentary: Let’s be upfront about what’s happening: The GOP is deploying legions of “observers” to polling places across the country whose job is to stop American citizens from voting in their own country.

Fortunately, the Democratic Party has an extensive program to counter this threat to the civil rights of all Americans — and to the right of all Americans to a fair and honest election.

For several presidential election cycles now, the Democratic Party has run a program called “Voter Protection Program,” which deploys tens of thousands of concerned lawyers across the country to monitor the people whom the GOP deploys to suppress the vote and interfere with the voting rights of American citizens; to give legal advice and support to voters whose civil rights are being interfered with by Republican vote suppression operatives; and to observe polling places to make sure election officials correctly follow the voting laws.

We have an active VPP program here in Washington state, and once again I’ll be a participating lawyer helping to protect the voting rights of American citizens residing in Washington from interference by Republican vote suppression operatives, so I won’t be posting here on HA on Election Day as I’ll be deployed to a forward observation post.

Fortunately, the job is a little easier here in Washington, because we have good voter protection laws, including a prohibition against amateur “observers” challenging anyone’s right to vote on Election Day. Here, all challenges must be made prior to the election.

While this has been revealed as satire by a pair of professional comedians, it’s not very far removed from how Republicans actually think.

“Over the past year Voter Fraud has become an important issue in Florida. Governor Rick Scott has spearheaded the issue by creating new Voter ID laws to curb illegal voting. But the fear remains that it may be too little too late. Florida gun owners are uniting to bring a new law to the table called Protect the Polls. The logic behind Protect the Polls is simple. If you are a legal gun owner in the state of Florida and you suspect someone on Election Day is committing voter fraud you can shoot him or her with your licensed weapon and not be charged with a crime.”

Doesn’t it seem like Serial has departed from any substantive defense of Romney and, for the past couple of weeks or so, has devolved into numerous arguments over polling and whether his candidate stands a chance of winning?

I guess he believes that if he says it often enough, it MUST come true!

By the way, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if there wasn’t a significant move in the President’s direction in Florida.

They know hurricanes, and they know it’s just a matter of time before they are hit with another really big one (they hit Florida hard just about every decade). They know that it’s just a matter of time before they get another Hurricane Andrew’s size storm going straight across the panhandle, possibly taking out a major city.

And with “Brownie” of FEMA @ New Orleans fame shooting his mouth off recently, it just reminds Floridians that if Romney is in office, they might well expect to be entirely on their own when the next big one hits. In contrast, the President has handled this one about as well as can be done under the circumstances.

Just a reminder that it was only a few months ago that Romney said the best solution was to out-source FEMA to private industry.

Can you imagine that telephone call? It would pretty much be the same experience you get when calling your insurance company when it has decided to put the breaks on paying claims.

“You say the hurricane blew your roof off? Do you have any actual video of wind causing your roof damage? No? Well, we can’t help you until you give us the proper proof we require that this is wind-related damage. How are we to know that it’s not termites?”

In the meantime, the company would insist that it was promptly handling “all proper claims” associated with the hurricane.

Unless the polls change, RR, Silver has coverage, because he takes the poll data and electively weights some more than others. Due to D +7 and D +8 poll weighting (discussed above @ 11 and elsewhere) this will continue pretty much until just before the election, unless there is such massive movement in Romney’s direction that the facade of Obama’s glorious victory next week just doesn’t hold up even to libbies like yourself.

So, keep bringing the Nate Silver stuff, and those on my side will keep ignoring it as long as it treats polls with incredible of respondent weighting as credible.

It’s only six days until the polls become irrelevant. I’ve been on the receiving end of liberal idiocy for four years. A few more days is nothing.

Now, I thought that Paul Ryan was gonna push granny’s wheelchair off the cliff.

Is that not true?

Kaiser Health Tracking Poll: October 2012
Most troublesome for Obama is that, among likely voters, GOP candidate Mitt Romney has pulled nearly even with him on which candidate would do a better job with Medicare — an issue that resonates in battleground states with large elderly populations like Florida and Pennsylvania. Obama’s advantage on that question has shrunk despite the fact that six in 10 likely voters continue to oppose Romney’s idea of changing Medicare to a premium support system, in which the government would guarantee each senior a fixed amount of money to help them purchase coverage. Overall, about 46 percent of voters said they prefer Obama on Medicare compared to 41 percent for Romney, a gap that is not statistically significant. In September, Obama held a 16 point lead on the Medicare question.

Senior voters are even more likely to oppose switching to premium support, but they prefer Romney to Obama on Medicare, 48 percent to 43 percent — also not a statistically significant gap.

If you think about it, we each have an awful lot of wealth riding on the outcome of the election, irrespective of any wagers we might have going.</em

No sir, you are not good.

Unlike you I thought long and hard about what is at stake in this election. If I could I’d give up all my wealth to guarantee for a certainty that Slick Willard and his pack of lying scamming confederates got no where near power in our country. None of us have that choice so I am doing what I can.

Bob, you may have more money than your neighbors, but you don’t have near enough money to survive the crazy wingnut disaster that a Slick Willard administration would bring to you. You don’t seem to fathom that in Slick Willard’s eyes you don’t have any wealth. You are the help. He holds you and everyone you love in contempt.

There’s a good reason why he hasn’t even attempted that. If he does, it leaves the door open for a response which points out Ryan’s extremist positions.

Even Ryan didn’t try to defend his positions in the V.P. debate, referring frequently to the “Romney-Ryan Plan” and thereby trying to shield himself behind the shift to more moderate views that Romney is trying to portray as they go into the post-convention portion of the campaign.

You wingies out there must just be loving Chris Christie’s fawning all over the president with regard to Sandy. Bob McConnell of Virginia has said some awfully laudatory things about Obama’s approach to the storm as well. It’s sad that it took a natural disaster to seal the deal, as Romney should never have been close to Obama, but it certainly now appears as if the election will go to the adult in the race.

Speaking of sucking, the latest RCP chart showed Romney trending sharply down before Sandy, Obama up, and the trends continue through the storm. As even the dimwitted Bob knows, trends continue until broken. Geez, there’s only six days left for Romney to pull that off. Hmm, I’m sure the Obama-Christie love fest will help Romney break that trend. Or maybe that photo op at the campaign, er, phony distaster relief event where Romney loaded a box of soup on a truck. Bob had better hope so, because CBS/NYT/Q, now finely tuned for their final poll, shows Obama up in Florida, Ohio and Virginia.

Here comes “The Pain” you keep talking about, Bob. By the way, love the CAPS. Projection. A troll will forever be his own worst enemy. It’s nice to know just how much this is going to hurt you.

“On the rape thing, it’s like, how does putting more violence onto a woman’s body and taking the life of an innocent child that’s the consequence of this crime, how does that make it better?” Koster said. “You know what I mean?”

“Every time you have an occasion to take something from the federal government and send it back to the states, that’s the right direction,” Romney said at a debate last June. “And if you can go even further, and send it back to the private sector, that’s even better.”

Asked by moderator John King of CNN whether that would include disaster relief, Romney said: “We cannot afford to do those things without jeopardizing the future for our kids. It is simply immoral, in my view, for us to continue to rack up larger and larger debts and pass them on to our kids.”

Now,

“I believe that FEMA plays a key role in working with states and localities to prepare for and respond to natural disasters,” Romney said in a statement supplied by his campaign Wednesday. “As president, I will ensure FEMA has the funding it needs to fulfill its mission, while directing maximum resources to the first responders who work tirelessly to help those in need, because states and localities are in the best position to get aid to the individuals and communities affected by natural disasters.”

What a fucking joke. Bob can’t even name five times Romney hasn’t lied.

This year, the GOP adopted — again — a platform under which no woman could ever legally have an abortion. Not if she was impregnated by her own father. Not if she was raped. Not if the abortion were needed to save her life. Never…

And that leaves you wondering: what about the 12-year-old girl who has grown up dreading the midnight creak of her bedroom door, the weight settling above her, the whispered assurances that “this is our secret.” What about this sixth grader whose barely adolescent breasts are suddenly swollen and who wakes up racing for the toilet every morning, sick to her stomach?

Is her life sacred?

I hope for this country’s sake, this madness is rejected once and for all, Nov 6..

The evening news is plastered with Obama-Christie coverage. Oh, and there’s Mitt, looking dejected at a rather sullen campaign event.

Seeing as how Hurricane Sandy has destroyed Romney’s campaign, perhaps Mitt should apply for some federal disaster relief himself. hey, even we here at HA could help in this emergency. We could all chip in and send a box of much-needed aspirin jars to Romney’s campaign headquarters.

Abbott has won support from Texas’ Republican Gov. Rick Perry, who tweeted that “No UN monitors/inspectors will be part of any TX election process.”

OSCE officials, unhappy and somewhat bewildered, point out that they are not part of the United Nations. Based in Vienna, the OSCE is the world’s largest regional security organization and is dedicated to ensuring “peace, democracy and stability for more than a billion people,” according to its website.

The group has monitored U.S. elections without incident since 2002. And it says it can’t do its job if it is barred from the polls.

Shit the right wing is turning this country into a banana republic backwater!

“[O]ver the five decades since John F. Kennedy was inaugurated, $1,000 invested in a hypothetical fund that tracks the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index (SPY) only when Democrats are in the White House would have been worth $10,920 at the close of trading yesterday.

“That’s more than nine times the dollar return an investor would have realized from following a similar strategy during Republican administrations. A $1,000 stake invested in a fund that followed the S&P 500 under Republican presidents, starting with Richard Nixon, would have grown to $2,087 on the day George W. Bush left office.”

Republicans are lousy for the economy too:

“Some of the difference may stem from the fact that every Republican president since at least the end of World War II has faced a recession during his first term in office …. Nine of 11 recessions that began since 1945 — and seven of eight since Kennedy ran for president in 1960 – started with Republicans in the Oval Office.”

Nate’s aggregation of 7 polls (including his own) for all 50 states (plus D.C.) shows something truly remarkable: The polls are unanimous as to which candidate will win which states, except for the following:

Counting the electoral votes of each state awarded to a particular candidate by these polls, Obama gets 326 EVs and Romney gets 212 EVs, which makes Obama the clear winner.

For Romney to win, 3 polls must be wrong about Virginia, 6 polls must be wrong about Colorado, 6 polls must be wrong about Iowa, and 6 polls must be wrong about New Hampshire — or, alternatively, in addition to Virgina, all 7 polls must be wrong about Ohio.

I think we can safely say if the election had been held a few days ago, when these polls were done, Obama would safely win the election. The chances of that many polls being wrong are pretty slim.

This doesn’t mean Obama is a slam-dunk for re-election. All it takes for Romney to win is for voter sentiment to change by less than 1% in Virginia, less than 2% Colorado and Iowa, and slightly more than 2% in New Hampshire. But conversely, a 0.75% shift in voter sentiment in Florida would flip that state from Romney to Obama, and making up Florida’s 29 EVs higher up the chart is damn near impossible.

It seems kinda obvious that if you’re Romney’s campaign manager you’d concentrate resources in Florida, Ohio, Virginia, Colorado, Iowa, and New Hampshire now. And maybe throw some
at North Carolina for insurance.

Even Romney’s best polls in Wisconsin (-2.2%), Pennsylvania (-3.0%), and Minnesota (-4.0%) suggest those states are out of his reach.

In Michigan, whose 16 EVs would be a huge boon for Romney (although not enough by themselves), Romney’s best poll has him only -0.6%, but this is an outlier. The other 6 polls in Michigan have Romney -4.0%, -5.6%, -6.0%, -6.9%, -7.0%, and -13.0%. Only an irrational optimist in the Romney camp would bank on Michigan.

It just makes sense that Romney’s most logical strategy at this point is to fight like hell for Florida and Ohio, and go after the remaining EVs he needs in the states where Obama’s lead is thinnest. Those are the states I listed @91 above.

If he can take Florida and Ohio, then Virginia and New Hampshire are enough, but without Ohio he needs all of the rest.

On Intrade Romney’s fundamentals have deteriorated markedly. Yesterday you could buy a Romney future worth $10 for $3.66, but tonight it’s worth only $3.19. That’s a 12.8% drop overnight. If a stock did that you’d piss in your pants! (This happens; Western Union’s stock dropped 18% today, but I don’t care because I don’t own it.)
I sure hope Cereal Bob isn’t arbitraging Romney futures on Intrade — for his sake. I honestly don’t want him to blow all of his money on a
pig in a poke; his bawling on Nov. 7 will be bad enough as it is.

Hey, moderators, Bob needs a new open thread as this one has become a true nightmare for him.

I see that Romney is holding a “victory” event this morning. Makes sense, seeing as how next week it’ll be a concession speech we hear out of him. Like Bob, Mitt needs to spike the ball now because next week will be a real fucking sad.

You’re an idiot for posting on how safe Obama was a few days ago when it’s clear his Midwest line of defense is crumbling right before your eyes. The polls you have been hanging your hat on have been giving Obama incredible turnout advantages, which aren’t materializing in the early voting and aren’t realistic compared with what has happened in previous years.

Earlier today I referenced the most recent ABC Washington Post poll. Of the likely voters surveyed, 82% said that they are “absolutely certain to vote.” Another 5% said that they would “probably vote,” 8% said that there was a 50-50 chance or less that they would vote, and 4% said that they have already voted. At least one out of every seven respondents who said that they are absolutely certain to vote is lying. In fact, the 1,382 “likely” voters they identified out of a poll of 1,764 adults would indicate a voting age population percentage of 78%. Never in my lifetime has that percentage reached even 65%.

Early voting, touted as Obama’s secret weapon in the Buckeye State, is down nearly 10 percent in Cuyahoga County, which includes Cleveland, compared to the same time in 2008. Even before Hurricane Sandy ushered in nasty rain, early turnout was lagging behind the benchmark it set four years ago, local election figures show.

Politically speaking, the failure to turn out a vote in this Democratic fortress is almost as good as casting a vote for Romney. And even while the number of Democrats voting early is down, there are indications that some of those who are voting are crossing over to Romney instead.

Perhaps Mr. Obama concluded that the evangelical vote was his 47%. It’s generally thought that the president burned any remaining bridge to them with the gay-marriage decision that Joe Biden made for him.

Sixteen Fisker Karma electric vehicles caught fire and burned to the ground after being submerged by saltwater from Hurricane Sandy’s storm surge.

The $100,000 cars were parked in Port Newark, N.J., prior to the storm’s arrival, according to Jalopnik. The vehicles were submerged when Hurricane Sandy’s storm surge beached the port, flooding the luxury electric vehicles and other cars parked in the port.

Jalopnik reported the cars “then caught fire, exploded.” The website showed several photos of what remains of the vehicles.

So none of the national polls are presuming 2008-level turnout for Democrats (at least without throwing in Democrat-leaning independents), while a large chunk of the state-level ones are. In this light, it’s not all that surprising that Romney’s showing a lead in most national polls while trailing in a bunch of the key swing states.

SerCon’s postings so far today….
11/01/2012 at 7:47 am
11/01/2012 at 8:00 am
11/01/2012 at 8:06 am
11/01/2012 at 8:10 am
11/01/2012 at 8:22 am
11/01/2012 at 8:25 am
11/01/2012 at 8:27 am
11/01/2012 at 8:33 am
11/01/2012 at 8:35 am
11/01/2012 at 8:43 am
11/01/2012 at 9:25 am
11/01/2012 at 9:31 am
What do you think? He sure has a lot of time to surf the web and post Gloom and Doom posts slamming democrats.
Paid Shill? Needs to get out of his parents basement? Not working at his real job?

@110 It looks like Bob’s losing it already. If he had any kind of life outside of lying for Gekko/Galt then perhaps he wouldn’t be in such a fucked up mental state. Sad. It’s obviously too late now for the good Doctor Steve to help the poor sap out.

So why is Serial in particular, and Republicans in general, spending so much time and energy before the election arguing about polls and who is and who is not going to win, and by how much?

Because they have to provide cover for the election fraud that is about to take place.

Sure, they’ve got the usual election suppression efforts in place – making it difficult for college students to vote, photo I.D. requirements, and arranging for voting places in minority areas to be surrounded by police checking I.D.s and otherwise harrassing the voters. The largest voter suppression gains come from massive culling of Democrats from the voter registration roles (such as that attempted in several states, including Florida).

But the real voter fraud is about to occur in those states with touch-screen voting machines. A retired NSA security analyst, Michael Duniho, applied some simple formulas to try to explain how large precincts in Arizona seemed to have an 8% to 10% switch in votes from Democratic to Republican candidates in the last several elections, and from other candidates to Romney in the last Republican primary. After testing for a multitude of other variables, the conclusion: the machines were programmed with a “trap door” to switch a pre-determined number of votes to the preferred Republican candidate. Other researchers in South Carolina and Florida independently came to the same conclusion, noting that it only happened in large or “swing” precincts so that the disparity would be less easy to notice and trace, and yet would have the largest impact on the election.

A former GOP consultant, Michael Connell was subpoenoed to testify in a civil lawsuit brought against the previous Republican Ohio Secretary of State Blackwell to the effect that he had written the program with the “trap door” previously described for the 2004 election in Ohio. But when he received several threats on his life, he asked for protection, which was communicated to the Justice Deptartment, which was then part of the George W. Bush administration. The request was met with silence. Michael Connel then died in an airplane crash in Dec. 2008, shortly before the trial was to begin.

Note that Diebold and another touch-screen computer vote machines have proprietary programming which the companies refuse to be available for scrutiny. Note also that HIG Capital, an investment firm controlled by Tagg Romney, and Mitt Romney’s former partners at Baine Capital, purchased Hart InterCivic, a supplier of computer vote-counting systems.

Election monitors have had quite a bit of experience documenting fraud in foreign elections, and one thing they do is compare election results to polling – including polls immediately before an election, and exit polling. Previous analysis of exit polling in several states indicated that John Kerry had won the 2004 election. But after the election was announced for George W. Bush, the media asked the wrong question. They asked “why was the exit polling wrong” in light of the election results. What they should have asked is “given the exit polling which we know from past experience to be very accurate, why are the election results so different”? But sadly, this early opportunity to shut the “trap door” and put those responsible in jail was lost – partly because the media refused to consider the “unthinkable”, and partly because the mainstream media was so cowed by the damage done to CBS and Dan Rathers over the Bush Texas Air National Guard story that they genuinly feared taking on the Bush administration head-on, without a clear and convincing “smoking gun”.

So in 2008 and 2010, there were numerous complaints from voters who said that they attempted to vote Democratic, but the machine would only record their votes as Republican votes. But such complaints were dismissed for lack of evidence (that pesky “proprietary software” issue, again).

This year, Republicans have made every effort to discredit non-Republican pollsters and analysts in advance. In some states they have attempted to outlaw exit polling entirely (with mixed results). They have fought against having a paper audit trail with which to verify the touch-screen voting. And Republican sheriffs in Texas have threatened to arrest United Nations vote monitors if they appear in their counties (which brings to mind Denzil Washington movie, “The Great Debaters”, which includes the line “In Texas, they lynch Negros”.

So, with an 8% to 10% pro-Republican advantage already programmed into the system, the results begin to reveal a different picture. In Arizona, Gabby Gifford’s 1% squeeker victory would have been a convincing victory. Jan Brewer would never have been governor. Walker would not have been elected governor of Wisconsin. Alan West would not have won his seat in the House in Florida, and the Republican gains in the House in 2010 are all questionable.

Of course, Serial will simply dismiss this all as “black helicopter” fantasies. But there is now way too much already known to dismiss this altogether.

Really, Bob, don’t you think you guys should wait until next week before you start devouring each other over your epic loss?

Rush: New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has decided to play the role of a Greek Column today for President Obama. Obama and Chris Christie will tour the Jersey shore. Who lives on the shoreline Snerdley? That’s exactly right, the 1% live on the beach.

Rush: Christie’s the only Republican not just praising Obama, it’s a — let’s just put it this way. Is it wrong for one man to love another man? But that man love out there is isolated in the state of New Jersey.

That’s all you’ve got? If Republicans try to steal this election, I am going to make sure there are long and lasting consequences. Karl Rove (and maybe Tagg Romney?) might have to get used to the idea that dropping your soap in the shower isn’t a good idea.

Steal the tire off my car, and I will laugh – it doesn’t fit your car anyway (long story there). Steal my wallet, it’s an inconvenience, but no lasting damage. But steal my vote – and you can tell me how it feels when a former football center pounds you into the ground. (If a nose guard tried to grab my face guard, I would pick him up, turn him upside down, and shove him head-first into the turf like a pile driver. Officials never see what’s happening in the center of the line once the ball is snapped, so all rules are subject to self-enforcement).

Hmm, a psycho-scream. That’s not a good sign, Bob. That’s like two notches above a psycho-laugh. Say, do you have any pills that you could take? If so, maybe now is a good time for you to take a few, but be sure to save a handful for next Tuesday evening because your condition is likely to worsen considerably by then.

Whatever happened to Paul Ryan? I haven’t seen him since he was busted for the phony and uninvited photo op of him scrubbing an already clean pot at a soup line. Did Romney lock Galt up in a box or something? Probably not a bad idea. The poor sap’s future in national politics is totally fucked.

To believe the polls/pollsters are wrong you have to accept the idea that firms, some of which have been at this for decades, are willing to stake their reputation on cooked numbers.

What if they’re not ‘cooked’, but weighted to reflect a standard that isn’t relevant, like, say, registered voter distribution in PA, when we know that the turnout distribution has been very different from the registration distribution?

It doesn’t have to be an intentional change to benefit a candidate to be inaccurate. It might even be sampling error. But we know the weighting occurs.

All I’m doing is pointing out the disparities between poll data and past voter behavior. Believe it or don’t. Either way is OK with me.

Really? Will Galt be scrubbing some more already clean pots? Say, wasn’t Galt the one Romney sent to Walmart to buy some canned goods so a campaign event could be staged as a phony disaster relief effort?

“But the last-minute nature of the call for donations left some in the campaign concerned that they would end up with an empty truck. So the night before the event, campaign aides went to a local Wal-Mart and spent $5,000 on granola bars, canned food, and diapers to put on display while they waited for donations to come in, according to one staffer.”

“When reporters arrived on site ahead of the candidate, they were given press badges describing the event as a “victory rally”
And shortly thereafter, the two large projector screens near the ceiling lit up with a glossy, 10-minute biographical video about the candidate

Empty-handed supporters pled for entrance, with one woman asking, “What if we dropped off our donations up front?”

The volunteer gestured toward a pile of groceries conveniently stacked near the candidate. “Just grab something,” he said.

Two teenage boys retrieved a jar of peanut butter each, and got in line. When it was their turn, they handed their “donations” to Romney. He took them, smiled, and offered an earnest “Thank you.”

Are there studies where exit polls are more accurate when the voting is on paper ballots vs electronic voting? Seems if studies shows that paper ballot voting was always with say…5% of the exit polling and electronic voting was wildly different depending how important the vote was the republicans, we would have a good case.

@138 The election hasn’t even occurred yet, and you can already see Wingnuttia rationalizing Romney’s impending loss:

“Last week, TheBlaze brought you a story from a North Carolina voting precinct using electronic voting machines that was already experiencing issues where votes for GOP candidate Mitt Romney were being changed to Democratic candidate Barack Obama. Now, it’s allegedly happening again, this time in both Kansas and Ohio ….”

Roger Rabbit Commentary: Absolutely everyone on both sides hates and distrusts electronic voting machines, so why is anyone still using them? Even if they’re as reliable as vendors claim, that doesn’t resolve the confidence issue. If the public doesn’t trust a voting technology, don’t use it.

“Are there studies where exit polls are more accurate when the voting is on paper ballots vs electronic voting?….

Well, that was the case in 2004 in several places, I’ll have to do some checking to get the precise locations (It’s been eight years, I’ve forgotten some details). But back then the electronic paperless voting was new, and the press was asking the wrong questions, as I indicated above.

In 2008 in some Florida precincts they had considerably more ballots counted than were cast (113%). They also had some “split voting” which didn’t make sense – some ballots showed the voter voted for Democratic candidates all the way down the ballot to dog-catcher, but then voted Republican for President (in a year when Pres. Obama won a lopsided victory and enjoyed enormous support). Of course, this wasn’t true for all ballots – only about 8% of them. Even Republicans would have trouble explaining Soviet-style elections where their candidate won by 99% of the vote!

“As a Republican for over 30 years, I’m embarrassed by the radical fringe that has taken over the party. Sadly, Allen West is their poster child, and the hateful, divisive comments he’s made throughout this campaign make it clear to me he’s the wrong choice for our district,” Crowder said in a statement.
Crowder, who is the Martin County Sheriff, said he is backing Murphy because “he has the right temperament and respect for others — including people he doesn’t agree with.”

Crowder’s wife had already gone public with her support for Murphy, stemming from West’s typical, utter lack of basic humanity, citing the fact that West refused to shake her husband’s hand at a local GOP meeting. He doesn’t appreciate being challenged, obviously. And he surrounds himself with people who are as obnoxious as he is, judging by the statement his campaign spokesman, Tim Edson, gave.

“Crowder is a Democrat and a sore loser. I’m shocked he waited this long. Perhaps Crowder hopes to continue cozying up to local Democrats so he can be their nominee against Allen West in 2014,” Edson said in a statement.

Republicans are devouring each other and the election hasn’t even taken place yet. Republicans are gonna get really ugly next week after they lose.

@131 Most of the polling data we’re getting now is “likely voters,” not “registered voters,” Bob. And thanks to early voting, we’re beginning to get numbers from people who have already voted — in effect, some of the polling at this stage of the campaign is exit polling. Furthermore, the closer you get to the election, the fewer undecideds there are, and we’re now at a stage where a 2-point lead can be an insurmountable barrier for the trailing candidate. It just doesn’t look good for Romney, Bob. Not impossible, but he’s still the underdog, and I’m reminding you of this because I don’t want the letdown for you on Tuesday night to be so shattering that you’ll harm yourself or anything like that — we don’t want to lose you, you’re too much fun to kick around.

# 139: That’s pretty obviously a diversionary tactic – take a few votes and make it appear like it’s benefiting the Democrats, so that you have cover when the real voting happens on Tuesday and thousands of votes get switched to Republicans.

And I agree – the most important thing is that all votes, Democratic, Republican, Libertarian, Green, et al., get accounted for properly. There’s no reason why we can’t use hand ballots and get a reliable count within 48 hours, as most European countries do.

# 142: I heard a brief part of a story this morning on NPR, which said that campaigns are using early voting to narrow down their campaign outreach. In many states, whether or not a person voted is public record, and much of these records are accessable online. That means that people who haven’t yet voted will be targeted for more agressive campaign efforts, as well as GOTV drives.

But it goes beyond that. With your name and address and birth date, campaigns can find out a lot about you. They can run programs which list your previous voting record, campaign donations, magazine subscriptions, shopping preferences (through club-card programs), etc.

All the more reason to make sure you mail your ballot today. If not, you may get barraged by door-ringers and telephone calls on Tuesday in a last-ditch effort to bring in the few undecided voters.

NOM, “whenever gay marriage has been put to a vote of the people the people soundly reject it. It only get through by activist courts.”

Until now. Wrong side of the inevitable. And another chance for the Easterners to complain about how much they hate the liberal coast and how awful it is that the coast subsidizes their farms, their education, provides them with a port to ship agricultural goods…

Looking forward to attending my Aunts’ wedding in Yakima. I mean they’ve only been together since before I was born.

GOP deniers’ arguments throughout the years about climate change:
2000 – 2003:
“Global Warming is a global scare tactic to force *US* consumers to go green”.
2003 – 2005:
“OK, maybe it is getting a little warmer but this has happened before and will happen again”.
2005 – 2008:
“OK, so its happening a record pace this time but you can’t convince me that it’s man-made”.
2008 – present:
“OK, so maybe it’s man-made but Obama is a Socialist.”
Present — Future:
“Okay, it’s man-made, but now we can’t do anything about it..oh well. it’s the Democrats fault, They should have made us lower green house gasses or something when we still had time.”

Despite a historic number of GOPTea filibusters, President Obama:
1. Passed Health Care Reform
2. Passed the Stimulus (Signed the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act in 2009; weeks after this stimulus went into effect, unemployment claims began to drop. 12 months later the private sector began producing more jobs and has continued to do so for 33 consecutive months with 5 million jobs created so far.)
3. Passed Wall Street Reform
4. Ended the War in Iraq
5. Has begun the Drawdown of the War in Afghanistan, 33,000 more troops are back home
6. Eliminated OBL & many AQ leaders
7. Turned Around U.S. Auto Industry and saved its 1.5 million jobs
8. Recapitalized Banks
9. Repealed “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”
10. Toppled M. Gaddafi: Joined a coalition of European and Arab governments in military action. No American lives were lost.
11. Told Mubarak to Go
12. Kicked Banks Out of Federal Student Loan Program, Expanded Pell Grants Spending
13. Boosted Fuel Efficiency Standards
14. Increased Support for Veterans
15. Tightened Sanctions on Iran (and has not declared war on Iran)
16. Passed Credit Card Reforms
17. Nominated the first Hispanic and third woman to serve on SCOTUS in 2009, Sonia Sotomayor; and nominated Elena Kagan, the fourth woman to serve, in 2010.
18. Expanded Wilderness and Watershed Protection, designating 2 million acres as wilderness, protecting more than 1,000 miles of rivers
19. Invested in Renewable Technology
20. Signed the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act into law
21. Signed an Executive Order to close GITMO in his first week in office but congress refuses to fund the closing and decide where to house the prisoners.
22. Is no longer defending DOMA

If righties think Benghazi was bad, they should take a look at their two heroes, W and the gipper.
W completely ignoring the CIA memo in August of 2001 which specifically stated 0 B L was determined to attack within the US, and then blocking investigations into the attack after it happened
(the only time in US history that an investigation into a major attack on the US was ever blocked, by the way).

Then read up on the gipper’s administration secretly selling weapons to a nation that was supposed to be a sworn enemy of the US.

We lost 4 on 9//11//12.
We lost 299 on 10//23//83.
We lost 3,000 on 9//11//2001.
Then ask yourself why you were not only NOT upset about those incidents, but lived over President Obama?

One thing this election is illuminating is the huge difference between life in the United States, and particularly, the north and south. The mindset of those dwelling in the different regions are as different as day and night. When you live a decent life, have access to education and it is promoted, and, you have resources–what governing/management entails is a lot different.

In the south many vote republican–because it enforces their negative views of people and the world. Keeps the ones with the least in awe-reverence of the ones who have the most. And, with pride they help them protect their margins. Reinforcing the controls of what makes living their lives miserable. Pretty much a caste system type environment.

In the north, everyone feels they have access to education (some may opt not to embrace it or may have some obstacles, but it is still there), the attitude is positive and the mindset is inclusiveness. But instead of building self esteem by holding the ones who have achieved their objectives in reverence and worship, citizens focus on obtaining their own.

This election is indeed a battle. Those who know better will not stand back and be marginalized. They don’t see where having a president who’s main lifelong focus being money with no social skills as being beneficial. Or see the need for the downsizing of government and leaving citizen governing decisions totally or possibly the hands of corrupt politicians on a local level with maybe little or no recourse. There is no doubt, citizens will come out to vote in record numbers. Nobody in the north wants to end up like those in south.

This election is about whether the United State keeps its balance or if the entire nation turns southern.

I have never lived in the south, so I have no point of reference. I don’t know what it’s like. Is it like what he describes?

Between Republican voter suppression, electronic voting and the Bradley effect, I have no idea who will win. I do KNOW that the country would do better with Obama as President, so I hope democrats win.
We shall see.

Many people vote Republican in all states. A majority do so in the South. And in places like Wyoming and North Dakota, which have nothing to do with the South and where black v. white is pretty much nonexistent.

Interesting piece on Monte Carlo, Nate Silver, and what happens to projections when the state polls are wrong:
Thus, of the five major state races in which polls were wrong over the last four years, Silver only got one right. I’m no baseball scout, but batting .200 when it counts won’t get you into the big leagues, let alone the All-Star game.

@168 It’s gotta be humiliating to get your ass handed to you by a black Kenyan Marxist with a forged birth certificate who pals around with terrorists. The only way a guy can lose to an opponent like that is if he can’t get his own mother to vote for him.

I’m pretty sure, based on the response to Guardian readers meddling in Ohio’s business in 2004, that most Americans don’t give a shit about what the Europeans think. It’s not their fucking country, idiot.

And there’s the ADP Employment report followed by what’s expected to be a positive BLS tomorrow. (How many straight months of gains?)

Define ‘positive’. Does that mean more than zero? Are gains something we should cheer if they don’t keep pace with population growth?

I know you’re eager to put on your cheerleading uniform again but the consensus is for 120,000 jobs created in October. That’s a little less than what’s needed to keep up with population growth rate. Meaning we’d be losing ground.

You understand that, don’t you?

Oh, and the ADP thing? It’s the first month with a new partner doing the polling and a new method of calculating jobs. No one has any idea whether it’s accurate – it’s the first month it’s been done this way.

@176 Obama has outperformed the previous administration in private sector job growth. The previous administration grew the public sector (oh, horrors!) whereas under Obama there are fewer publc sector employees.

Seeing as how the only thing Romney proposes is to give us more trickle-down, supply side, deregulated bullshit, there’s absolutely no reason to believe that more private sector jobs will be created under an Romney administration than will created under another Obama administration. You simply don’t have a record of job creation.

Of course I understand that, but do you not understand how spin works. The President can say we created jobs every month in 2012, the stock market is soaring and we’re coming back.

Willard will be over in the corner pouting and saying not good enough. I know you all are feeling confident and spending more than any time in five years but you’re wrong. You’re doomed unless you vote for me.

Which message plays outside the bubble of fox/right wing talk, I.e. 15% of the electorate on any given day? What does the librul media cover now that Willard is running from them like a minor character on Walling Dead.

Lets say I’m an undecided middle class voter. A few weeks ago I got my kids’ college fund statements. They’re up 4% this quarter. The 401k I have is up 14% YTD. I’m considerably better off than four years ago.

@181 Only if you spin it in an alternate universe. Romney fared worse than both his predecessor and successor when you look at how Massachusetts did on job creation relative to other states. You’re making a case that Gov. Deval Patrick would make a better job-creating president than Mitt Romney.

(Reuters) – New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg on Thursday endorsed President Barack Obama for a second term, citing the importance of his record on climate change, particularly in the aftermath of the devastating blow dealt to the New York area by storm Sandy.http://www.reuters.com/article.....G320121101

You and other HA leftist fools love to discount Rasmussen. Scott has been the most accurate pollster in major elections. Puddy delivered review after review and you morons discount his abilities every four years.

So if Romney wins… what will you libtards say? Nothing of course… your heads will explode!

BTW there have been new 2012 documented instances of electronic voting machines switching Romney votes to Obummer. The system operators blame it on user error. Of course what else to they have to say… the Romney voter is dumb to vote for Romney.

I see that today’s Reuters/Ipsos poll has the president up nationally by a point and he has Virginia +5. And check out the RPC chart. The trend is obviously in Obama’s favor and it’ll continue that way until the trend is broken. Bob and Mitt just wasted another day and now there’s only four days left for them to turn it around.

Wow ylbuttspigot, Broward County… except the morons at Americasblog seem to forget Broward County is a liberal bastion of moronic thought. Broward County is in total control of LIBTARDS. So the libtards are doing it to themselves by miscounting votes.

Puddy realizes ylbuttspigot finds useless leftist puke materials on the web, don’t read them and then throw them up as GOSPEL.

Abigael Evans, the 4-year-old Colorado girl who was driven to tears by the seemingly neverending presidential campaign coverage, has received a very rare thing in our modern media age: a formal apology from NPR for making her cryhttp://www.latimes.com/enterta.....0268.story

Irrelevant, my friend. Look at Romney’s and Deval Patrick’s performance relative to other states and I’m sure you’ll see the light. Do that and you might even become a Deval Patrick Democrat and start urging him to run in 2016! Against Christie, because, sadly, Romney will have been long forgotten by then. Of course, that’s unless Christie turns Dem sometime over the next year or two. You did notice that Gov. Christie was looking rather like a Democrat these past couple of days, didn’t you?

Piddles continues to flog the part about Rasmussen being declared the most accurate NATIONAL poll just before the 2008 election. Yup, he got the final NATIONAL percentages just about right. Problem is a damn fool, O.K. I can see why Piddles is confused, knows that we don’t hold a National election.

So the last time Ras was looking at state-by-state elections in 2010, how’d he do?

Rasmussen, though less blunt about his failures, admitted that he was pretty far off but never acknowledged that “Lookie here, my weighting seem to consistently show a higher number for Republican candidates than what the final results actually are.”

He missed one HUGE, 11 points huge.

Every pollster misses something along the way and our biggest miss came in Nevada. Our final survey in that Senate race showed Republican challenger Sharron Angle ahead 49% to 45% but Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid won 50% to 45%.

I notice that while Serial and Kim have both summarily dismissed my post about Republican vote-stealing, they haven’t said a peep about the allegations themselves. That’s pretty inciteful, as it hit the airwaves yesterday in force yesterday.

It seems that their response so far has been to tamper with some programming so that it appears a few votes are being switched to the President, so they can argue that neither side derived any big benefit. But, of course, a few votes sliding to Obama can’t outway the tens of thousands they will try to convert into Romney votes on Tuesday in targeted precincts.

My guess is that the Republican propoganda machine can’t decide yet if they can continue to ignore this question until after Tuesday’s election, or whether they have to address it before then. I’m expecting the usual dismissal of the sources as being, well, not Republican enough.

Serial, Kim, and other guys getting paid a dime a post will get their marching instructions either tomorrow morning or Monday on how to handle this.

What do you think? He sure has a lot of time to surf the web and post Gloom and Doom posts slamming democrats.
Paid Shill? Needs to get out of his parents basement? Not working at his real job?

I suspect the latter.

From what he’s said about himself, I have a strong suspicion that I know who ‘bob’ really is. Would it be wrong of me, in the interests of ensuring quality and safe patient care, and in ensuring that he’s not stealing time from his employer/associates, that I let them know about his internet habits during the workday? It really would be about helping him apply his medical skills appropriately and focusing on the clinical and administrative responsibilities that he has been entrusted with, rather than spending all this time reading and linking reams of right wing sites, and endlessly posting them here (and maybe elsewhere).

As soon as this election is over, I think the President should instruct the Justice Dept. to use it’s rule-making authority under the Voting Rights Act to declare that any electronic voting machine which does not have a reliable duplicate paper ballot system for verification does not comply with the standards of the Voting Rights Act.

The way I envision it, the machine would create a “pro forma” ballot, which the voter then checks for accuracy and then places in the ballot box. The computer can record the votes for convenience and timely reporting, but the paper ballot takes precedence. If the voter notices a discrepency, he takes it to the precinct polling place manager who records the discrepency and issues a “corrected” ballot. EVERY ballot would be counted – not just those within the “margin of error” required to trigger an automatic re-count.

There would be stiff jail sentences for those attempting to steal votes.

In my recent snapshot of October, I see 466 comments from you vs. 819 of his.

Substantially less but still substantial.

Bob is indeed approaching unhinged right wing troll status (jerry/maxie/puddyidiot territory) but we’re all being driven a bit crazy by the prospect of a power-mad pathological liar like Willard Romney taking control of the White House..

This election is even making 4 year olds cry. See 188.

I hope all the regulars and lurkers here have voted. If not, fill it out and send it in NOW!

Stocks posted nice gains today, fueled by positive economic reports. I made $3,900 in the stock market today! Sucks to be a Republican Cassandra. Their strategy of running the economy into the ground has failed them.

@175 You’ve got a rationalization for everything, don’t you Bob? And if Romney loses Tuesday, as he probably will, you’ll be mouthing phrases like “dead voters” and “felon voters” and “voting fraud” and blah-blah-blah …

I wouldn’t be at all surprised to learn that they’ve already got a handle on Bob’s contempt for them and everybody else he knows. Just think about how tough it must be for Bob, what with nobody he knows appreciating him for being a Galtian Lord.

@205
Romney has to hold on to everything he’s already got plus get Ohio and one other state to win. Obama just has to not lose what he’s currently got and he’s not completely out of the race in VA and FL. Fivethirtyeight actually has VA as leans Obama. It’s hard to see a Romney win coming out of thus.

Bob is indeed approaching unhinged right wing troll status (jerry/maxie/puddyidiot territory) but we’re all being driven a bit crazy by the prospect of a power-mad pathological liar like Willard Romney taking control of the White House

.

LOL…I voted for Obama, you lazy shill…although I had to hold my nose to do it.

See, its progressive lemmings like you that are stuck thinking inside your little box(or basement). You should focus more on paying your fare share instead of worrying about “trolls”

@208 “its people like me that have to pay your family’s “fair share”.”

We would be grateful if it were true.

The rich pay a proportionately higher share of federal income taxes, but most of their income is exempt from FICA taxes, and they get very favorable tax treatment at the state-local level where taxes are regressive.

So it’s a wash, and the wage-earning classes are not getting a free ride at the expense of the rich.

Bradley Effect.The theory proposes that some voters will tell pollsters they are undecided or likely to vote for a black candidate, while on election day they vote for the white candidate.

The Bradley effect theory posits that the inaccurate polls were skewed by the phenomenon of social desirability bias.[7][8] Specifically, some white voters give inaccurate polling responses for fear that, by stating their true preference, they will open themselves to criticism of racial motivation. Members of the public may feel under pressure to provide an answer that is deemed to be more publicly acceptable, or ‘politically correct’.

The economic picture the past 10 years has been one charade after another. The reason?
Derivatives.
Derivitives will take down the dollar eventually. You won’t see it coming in the stock market, Euro or anywhere else.
Most people are woefully unprepared.
They believe this economic deck of cards with Derivatives as the underpinning is somehow sustainable. It’s not.
Get ready for a wild ride in the next few years. Government at all levels is being crushed by debt in the US and thru out the world.
Have any of you studied the $1.5 Quadrillion scam called Derivatives?

Same way I always have. With the paper money the Federal Reserve prints. You see, there’s no point in printing it unless people and rabbits spend it, so the Fed will make sure it gets into my paws. I don’t even have to work for it! Every time they come along with another QE my stocks go up again. The $3900 I made in the stock market today will buy a lot of bread, milk, and eggs.

A growing number of my neighbors are becoming backyard chicken farmers. The city lets you keep 3 chickens, which can provide 2 or 3 fresh eggs per day. The local library even sponsors classes on how to do it.

So you’re suggesting, not in reference to anything I actually said, that each county wrote the code that is on the machines they have? By maintain, do you suggest that they actually analyze that code line by line for errors? Of course not. Do you actually have relatives in Florida, who knows, don’t care, doesn’t mean a thing, ignoramous.

@217

Missed the point. Keep trumpeting your National Accuracy for Rasmussen. He was even kind of close in a single state when it was the only big election in the country. His track record state-by-state in 2010 speaks volumes. 11 different races off by 10% or higher. You’re right, Scott’s AWESOME.

Trust me, you’ll still be able to buy milk and eggs, even if the financial system blows up. That’s because milk and eggs come from farmers, not bankers, and farmers will always take something in trade if money is no good.

The former president is today off in the Cayman Islands, where he will be giving a keynote address at the Cayman Alternative Investment Summit and no doubt popping in to say hello to some of Mitt’s many investments.

Digging deeper and not relevant. The county doesn’t write the code. This is a fundamental issue you’re having.

In the case of machines accepting votes and then dropping the totals, how is a validate and printout relevant? If 2000 people voted on Tuesday and walked away with a printout that was correct and then sometime between Tuesday and Wednesday the machine says only 1600 people voted, how would the voter know?

An IT guy maintains all the office computers. Does that mean he wrote the Windows code when he installed it?

Do you even know what they’re talking about in Broward Co? If you’re relatives you claim live there have told you the County is in control of the machines, is lack of intellect a genetic trait in your family? it’s clear you have it but what of the rest of your bloodline?

235 – All the hard-core evangelicals appear to have discarded their fears of a Mormon in the White House who to my knowledge hasn’t disclaimed any LDS influence in the way JFK did with Roman Catholicism.

Nate Silver is a man of very small stature, a thin and effeminate man with a soft-sounding voice.

…I want to be careful to not conflate Dean Chambers’s direct invocation of manly manliness [quoted above] with Byers’s more oblique reference. But I think the point holds true. Silver’s work is humiliating to people who are little more than gossipmongers. The response is to accuse them of listening to public radio and living in Seattle.

The Congressional Research Service has withdrawn an economic report that found no correlation between top tax rates and economic growth, a central tenet of conservative economic theory, after Senate Republicans raised concerns about the paper’s findings and wording.

Security officers from the C.I.A. played a pivotal role in combating militants who attacked the American diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, on Sept. 11, deploying a rescue party from a secret base in the city, sending reinforcements from Tripoli, and organizing an armed Libyan military convoy to escort the surviving Americans to hastily chartered planes that whisked them out of the country, senior intelligence officials said Thursday.

Bill Ayers
Muslim
Socialist
Atheist
Attacking Freedom of Religion
Apologizing for America
Soros and Jarrett and Emanuel and Wright, oh my!
No honor
No visits to troops
America is a laughingstock
America is WEAK!
DEBT!!

The right wing noise machine sure is nifty…the ability to tickle people’s fears and prejudices and make them run to the shiny thing over there…without having a clue about how they’re going to get fucked over.

It was just as amazing how none of them could point to a single specific thing that they think Romney would do…except “change”. They’re pouring all their inchoate antipathy for Obama and pouring it into Romney – exactly the plan.

80% of Seattle is a shithole, nobody wants to live there(unless they are single or gay), especially if they are trying to raise a family.

I was thinking about that attitude he’s spewed repeatedly last night…as my wife and I, and our younger son and his friend, both 11, walked three blocks through our urban hellhole from our house on a quiet street to a busy, well-lit, commercial street full of pedestrians and open shops, and had our choice of nice restaurants to go to. We chose Mescaleria de Oaxaca, but could have chosen one of 6 or 8 others. Afterward, we had dessert and coffee at Lladro, but could have gone to Starbucks or another local joint. Then we walked home.

Really? You’re equating attacks on Bush for starting two wars, destroying the budget surplus, initiating torture, fucking up and allowing 9/11 to happen, and imploding the economy with the uninformed yawps about SOROS! and WRIGHT! and APOLOGY TOUR! and AMERICA IS A LAUGHINGSTOCK!!

Really?

You’ll say anything in defense of right-wing stupidity.

For your information, I wrote in someone in the Cantwell/Baumgartner race – I will never vote for her after her shameful refusal to support the anti-Alito fillibuster, and I refuse to vote for Brad Owen. So there, asshat.

The U.S. economy added an estimated 171,000 jobs in October, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics monthly employment report released Friday — exceeding analysts expectations, and sparing President Obama from lackluster economic news days before the election

One thing I’ve noticed this campaign is the Romney campaign’s use of Facebook as a way to get their message out. They don’t post it on their facebook page, that would be too easy for reporters to spot and call him on it. But what they will do is circulate pictures with comments on them, alleging all sorts of innacurate things, which then go viral on Facebook among Romney supporters (and hense to their entire “friends” network.

A recent one claimed that Romney had release ALL his tax returns, but the liberal media wouldn’t report on it.

Another one, on a day when there was claimed to be no campaigning, had a picture of Romney loading a box into a truck and claiming that Romney was doing more for hurricane relief than Obama was, hiding “safe and warm” in the White House and giving long speaches for the TV cameras.

There’s lots of examples. I may not open Facebook again until after the elections are over.

There seems to be a huge difference in the number of popular, likable top-tier surrogates that each side can field.

Well, Lib Pinocchio, since you brought up surrogates:

Whatever the numbers, Ohio is in for a blowout of campaigning in the next few days. In the Cincinnati suburbs, Romney aides are planning for the kickoff Friday night of Romney’s final cross-country tour, dubbed the “Romney-Ryan Real Recovery Road Rally.” The show will be packed with governors like Rick Perry, Bobby Jindal and Sam Brownback; senators like John McCain, Marco Rubio, Kelly Ayotte, John Thune and Lindsey Graham; freelance Republican stars like Condoleezza Rice and Rudy Giuliani; plus the occasional sports legend like Jack Nicklaus.

Obama will answer with a rally Monday in Columbus with Bruce Springsteen and Jay-Z.

I’ll agree that the jobs numbers out today were not devastating. Above the rate at which the population naturally grows.

Still, I think that Team Obama will look at this as bullet, dodged. One month of numbers (do not forget that the unemployment rate went UP) does not undo four years of public sentiment about how things have gone.

Memory check:

With this month’s report, we have added a net 3,252,000 jobs to the economy in the 41 months since the recovery began in June 2009. That’s an average of 79,317 jobs per month, far below what’s needed to keep up with population growth (~125K per month).
In the private sector, we’ve added 3,811,000 jobs, averaging 92,951 jobs per month — still way below what’s needed to keep up with population growth.
In 2012 alone, we’ve added 1,569,000 jobs overall, for an average of 156,900 per month. That’s a better rate than the overall recovery, and it keeps up with population growth — but at that rate, we’d need to go 251 months to recover the 8 million jobs we’ve lost — over 20 years.

I suspect Obama will focusing on the bailout, OBL and the movie, and ‘Forward’, rather than risking pointing to the jobs figures released today. Maybe I’m wrong – wouldn’t be the first time – but it gives Romney an opening to refute any claim Obama makes, and Romney’s got the money to do it publicly.

It’s about the economy. This morning’s numbers probably are a draw.

This weekend will be about Sandy and the cleanup or lack thereof, putting the focus on FEMA and Bloomberg. Benghazi and OBL will be featured prominently as well, and might offset each other. Unless there are more leaks. Right now the biggest finger is pointing at State. I just don’t see Hillary taking the fall, quietly.

Here’s why I think the jobs data don’t help either side. Yesterday, even though the numbers were embargoed, Team Obama undoubtedly knew what they were. It’s one of the benefits of incumbency – the ability to pre-plan how to respond to something, good or bad.

What did Team Obama’s spokesperson have to say yesterday about the upcoming numbers?
But the Obama campaign says up or down, the October unemployment rate won’t make much difference: “We also know that people at home are making their decisions based on where we take the economy from here,” Jen Psaki, the traveling press secretary for the Obama campaign, told reporters on Thursday.

“We don’t know what the numbers are. No one does,” Psaki said. “Regardless of what they are, the President is still going to feel there’s more we need to do to help the economy recover at a faster rate, put more people back to work.

So fucking what? It’s a far better record than the last administration. Romney brings the same failed policies as before. The record is one of abject failure and there’s absolutely no reason for anybody to believe that those policies won’t fail America again.

The most vote-rich
county for Obama in 2008 was Cuyahoga—where he garnered 458,422 of his
2,940,044 votes.1 As of Tuesday, October 30, 2012, 27,865 people had already voted in Cuyahoga County. By comparison, by this time in 2008, 30,850 people had voted, a very slight decrease of 2,985.

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